The Syrian president's shocking anti-Jewish rant during
Pope John Paul's recent pilgrimage was bad enough. But
now Assad has flabbergasted even his own officials by
reportedly okaying an international Holocaust-denial
conference in Damascus by year's end.

A Syrian Embassy spokesman in Washington insisted he
had "no knowledge" of the plan but said he "believed"
the report incorrect.

The conference — which seeks to "scientifically prove"
that the Holocaust never took place — is being organized
by French propagandist Roger Garaudy, a former Communist
who converted to Islam, and his Iranian-based Swiss
cohort, Jurgen Graf. Originally scheduled for Beirut
last month, it was canceled after Lebanese authorities
found themselves inundated with international protests.

Garaudy, who claims Jews "invented" the Holocaust to
justify the establishment of Israel, then turned to
Assad. Syria's Foreign Ministry strongly recommended a
presidential veto. But according to one Mideast
diplomat, Assad jumped at the chance: "He believes that
anything he says against Jews will increase his status
in the Arab world."

In fact, Holocaust denial and rabid anti-Semitism are
new to neither Syria nor the Arab world. Copies of that
classic fake "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,"
which claims there's a Jewish plot to take over the
world, are sold across the Arab world. Syrian Minister
of Defense Mustafa Tlass' book, "The Matzah of Zion,"
perpetuates the lie that Jews use Christian blood to
bake Passover matzos and reportedly is being made into a
Syrian government-financed film.

Anti-Jewish hatred also enabled a number of leading Nazi
war criminals to find postwar political asylum in Egypt,
Iraq and Syria.

Still, it is Holocaust denial that has captured Arab
attention of late. As propagandists see it, denying the
truth of the slaughter of 6 million Jews somehow denies
any justification for Israel.

Hamas officials refer to the "alleged" Holocaust and
loudly question whether the death camps existed.

The same theme is echoed in mosques from the Arabian
peninsula to Lebanon. Jerusalem's Mufti Ikrema Sabri
recently declared, "Six million [Jews killed]? It was a
lot less. ... It's not my fault that Hitler hated Jews.
The Jews are hated all over the world." The mufti then
carried his denials back another 3,000 years by
insisting that King Solomon never built a temple atop
the Jerusalem mount that now houses the Muslim Dome of
the Rock.

Egypt, the first nation to sign a peace treaty with
Israel, also has latched on to Holocaust denial. And a
Holocaust-denial meeting has been held this month in
Amman, Jordan, under the sponsorship of the Jordanian
Writers Union. The gathering heard writer Arafat Hijazi
make the twisted claim that "the number of Jews [killed
in World War II] did not exceed 3 million ... and the
number of available gas chambers then could not burn
more than half the bodies."

Fortunately, that was too much even for some Arabic
observers. "What purpose does such a statement serve?"
asked the Jordan Times. "It has long been fashionable in
our region to either deny the Holocaust or question its
true magnitude, presumably in order to erode the
foundations on which Israel itself was established. This
misguided exercise is self-defeating."

Let's hope Bashar Assad reads the Jordan Times, or maybe
even this
column.